Re: Flemish vs Dutch.

Katie and I live in the Flemish part of Belgium, so that means we have to learn Dutch. This is confusing because a savvy foreigner will know that the Flemish speak Flemish (or "Vlaams" as they say). So I asked my boss what was up. As an authoritative scholar and expert on everything Flemish (by virtue of his being an actual Flemish guy), he said that the Flemish will definitely get offended if you confuse them culturally with their northerly neighbors, but since Vlaams is not an official language, it can only be considered a dialect of Nederlands, and so it's fine to call it Dutch.

Other things had also led me to this conclusion. First of all, I keep calling the Flemish people's language Dutch, and nobody (except my savvy American friends) has corrected me yet. Moreover, in a couple of weeks Katie and I are going to begin a course subsidized by the Flemish government, and taught by a native Flemish speaker, called "Dutch for foreigners." Other governmental documents and signs refer to the language as Nederlands or in English translations, Dutch.

That said, there are big vocabulary and pronunciation differences between the Flemish and Dutch. Even between Flemish townships you end up with dialects that make the language sound completely different -- news programs on the Belgian public TV often have to translate what someone is saying because their dialect is so strong.